Brian ChirlsBrian Chirls is the Digital Technology Fellow at POV, developing digital tools for documentary filmmakers, journalists and other nonfiction media-makers. The position is a first for POV and is funded as part of a $250,000 grant from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @bchirls and GitHub.

Try it now! Virtual reality display technology is advancing quickly, but the way to interact with virtual worlds is lagging behind. So here's a way you can use a mobile device to navigate a virtual space.

Web video technology is advancing rapidly, and it's time for an update on what's possible, what's broken and what's on the horizon. The first in this series of blog posts covers the state of basic video playback in late 2014.